BUDGET DEAL REMAINS ELUSIVE

In dueling appearances, Obama and Boehner display divisions over how to avoid ‘fiscal cliff’

WASHINGTON 
President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner swapped barbed political charges on Wednesday yet carefully left room for further negotiations on an elusive deal to head off year-end tax increases and spending cuts that threaten the national economy.

Republicans should “peel off the war paint” and take the deal he’s offering, Obama said sharply at the White House. He buttressed his case by noting he had won re-election with a call for higher taxes on the wealthy.

But he drew a quick retort from Boehner when the White House threatened to veto a fallback bill drafted by House Republicans that would prevent tax increases for all but million-dollar earners. The president will bear responsibility for “the largest tax increase in history” if he makes good on that threat, the Ohio Republican said.

In fact, it’s unlikely the legislation will get that far, as divided government careens into the final few days of a struggle that affects the pocketbooks of millions and blends lasting policy differences with deep political mistrust.

Boehner expressed confidence the Republicans’ Plan B bill would pass the House today despite opposition from some anti-tax dissidents. The leadership worked to shore up the measure’s chances late in the day by setting a vote on a companion bill to replace across-the-board cuts in the Pentagon and domestic programs with targeted cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Republicans also said they were hopeful the tax measure could quickly form the basis for a final bipartisan “fiscal cliff” compromise once it arrives in the Senate.

Democrats, in the majority in the Senate, gave no indication of their plans.

On paper, the two sides are relatively close to an agreement on major issues, each having offered concessions in an intensive round of talks that began late last week.

But political considerations are substantial, particularly for Republicans.

After two decades of resolutely opposing any tax increases, Boehner is seeking votes from fellow Republicans for legislation that tacitly lets rates rise on million-dollar income tax filers. The measure would raise revenue by slightly more than $300 billion over a decade than if all of the Bush-era tax cuts remained in effect.

Boehner’s office trumpeted another figure — an estimate that claimed it would amount to a tax cut of nearly $4 trillion compared with what would happen if all those tax cuts were to expire as scheduled with the turn of the year.

Boehner won a letter of cramped support from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist during the day. Norquist’s organization, Americans For Tax Reform, issued a statement saying it will not consider a vote for the bill a violation of a no-tax-increase pledge that many Republicans have signed.

But another conservative group came to an opposing conclusion. “Allowing a tax increase to hit a certain segment of Americans and small businesses is not a solution; it is a political ploy,” the Heritage Foundation said in a statement.

As for the scheduled defense cuts, Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young of Florida, who heads the House panel with jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s budget, said he is undecided how to vote on the legislation.

“This is not a game. This is real because so much of the sequester (spending cuts) would be defense — half of it,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s workable.”

Rep. Tom Rooney of Florida, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he will vote for the legislation even if it leaves the defense cuts in place. He said if he didn’t vote for a bill that prevents a tax increase for 99 percent of people “I’m not doing my job.”

That appeared to be the hope of Boehner and the rest of the leadership, that by showing his rank and file is united behind the fallback bill, the speaker would be in a strong position to demand concessions from the White House in the broader endgame.